Tyre situation defines Red Bull grid positions
Red Bull Racing will not find itself on the front end of the grid this time. Sebastian Vettel qualifying in 8th after deciding not to set a time in the final part of qualifying. Mark Webber got caught out in Q2 and will have to start from 12th.
Sebastian Vettel, Position: 8th, (3rd Practice – P1, 1:23.168):
“A pretty different session today; it was extremely tight. From Q1 onwards we decided to go on the soft tyres. The first run in Q2 wasn’t good enough, so I had to go again and it was clear then that if we made it to Q3, we wouldn’t have any new soft tyres left. I think we got the maximum at the end there in Q3, we saved some sets of tyres, which we thought going in to qualifying would be crucial, but we didn’t have the pace of the top five cars today. Tyres will be important tomorrow, so let’s see what we can do.”
Mark Webber, Position: 12th, (3rd Practice – P4, 1:23.578):
“I’m pretty surprised by that; the guys did a good job with the car and were pushing hard all weekend. We were quick, but the track kept getting faster and we got caught out. My first timed lap in Q2 wasn’t fast enough. I was P2 after the first lap and we thought we had done enough, but in the end it wasn’t. I didn’t use two sets of tyres in Q2, which it turns out wasn’t the right thing to do. I was told not to go out again, but the way that the track improved was a surprise to all of us. We were very strong in the first part of Q2 and I was happy with how I drove my lap. It’s the way it goes sometimes.”
Christian Horner, Team principal:
“A difficult session, obviously everyone ended up having to use the soft tyre in Q1. In Q2 we thought we had done enough with Mark, we knew it was going to be tight, but we thought the time was enough and were keen to take a new set of tryes into Q3, but it didn’t work out and we missed the cut with him. We knew we had to run again with Seb and he did just enough to make it into Q3, but he’d used all his sets of soft tyres, at which point it became a game of tactics. Mercedes were in the same position as us with tyres and were the only one we could potentially out qualify. We performed an out and in-lap to make sure we were the first to do that and then started a timed, but Seb was down compared to Rosberg – the the only other scrubbed tyre user – so we aborted the lap and will start in P8. We have four new sets of tyres for Mark and three for Sebastian, which can be extremely valuable in the race.”
Cyril Dumont, Renault:
“It was disappointing today. With Mark, we thought he didn’t need to run again in Q2, but unfortunately his time was not enough – we should have gone out again, which prevented him from going to Q3. With Seb, we used all the new soft tyres in Q1 and Q2, so we only had scrubs left for Q3, which was not ideal. We decided to do an out and in-lap, so we can change the tyres for tomorrow.”
